Perth’s “Hundred Consummate Asses”

The members of the Perth Lyric Club, who entertained Sir William McGonagall last week, are wearing the badge of penitence. “Perth’s Hundred Consummate Asses” is certainly not heading which can appear flattering to the youth of the Fair City, but although perhaps getting a laugh at the great poet they have the satisfaction of knowing that Sir William, besides being well looked after while in Perth, received a substantial fee for his “labours.”

Dundee Evening Post, 16th December 1901

Lyric Club Strongly Criticised

Worse Fools than McGonagall

A company numbering about “one hundred gentlemen,” and styling themselves the “Perth Lyric Club,” entertained McGonagall in one of the hotels in the Fair City the other night. In reading the newspaper reports of the proceedings it is difficult to get away from the conclusion that McGonagall was far from being the greatest fool in the gathering, and hard believe that in the city of Perth “one hundred gentlemen” could be found such consummate asses as to imagine they were enjoying themselves by spending a night in listening to the drivelling vanities of a poor old man seventy-eight years of age. There is no greater prig than the fellow who winks his eye to one as an intimation of the smart thing he is about to do at the expense of another; and this is really what the members of the Perth Lyric Club have been doing among themselves, with McGonagall the butt of what they no doubt consider their wit. They must clever indeed who can afford to laugh at the mental deficiencies of their fellows, and it might be to the advantage of Perth Lyric Club to learn that really clever people never give scope to their abilities that direction. The discovery would, of course, be the reverse of complimentary to the club and its members, but it would be their first step on the way to that cleverness for which their soul yearns, and had they taken it earlier they would have been saved the humiliation of bringing themselves into public contempt by poking fun at a poor old man. — Aberdeen Evening Express.